ALBUM OF THE MONTH: SISTERS (EXPANDED & REMASTERED)

Few captured the sounds of 80s Britain quite like the Bluebells. With their trademark jangly guitars and soaring harmonies, the Glaswegians found themselves unlikely pop heroes. Sisters, their 1984 debut album delivered a string of hits, including Young At Heart, which unexpectedly - and nothing to do with a certain Volkswagen commercial - hit number 1 in 1993 (nine years after its initial release).
 

This newly remastered edition of Sisters throws in b-sides, live sessions and rarities – pressed on limited edition double vinyl. So, revisit, or dive in for the first time, a snapshot of a band who made a quiet but lasting dent in British pop!
 
We caught up with Ken McCluskey and Bobby Bluebell for a few questions around the album:

What can fans expect from this album? 

Ken: The newly remastered and expanded edition of our debut album "Sisters" is the first time that all our singles have been collated together alongside a treasure trove of recordings from our heady days at London Records. We had a most enjoyable time working in studios for the first time with producers such as Elvis Costello, Bob Andrews, Colin Fairley, and Alan Shacklock who helped show us the way. This collection of songs demonstrates our love of pop music, being a young person, having great fun with friends in a band and travelling the world balanced with the importance of mapping contemporary issues and injustices felt by a young urban folk in the time of Thatcher, deindustrialization, unemployment, and the futility of war.

Tell us what inspired the album artwork? 

Ken: We liked the idea of a collage of some of our favourite things in a world or global setting hence the main globe shape. Bobby put it together with his friend and graphic designer Pete Barrett. Some of the images are family orientated, like a cherubic Bobby at the seaside with his lovely Mum front sleeve bottom left. Or my brother David and I's parents courting picture underneath the title "Sisters" on the front cover. No idea how Stalin got in there top right, we preferred Lennon at the time. For this new edition we wanted a very different accompanying colour for the setting of the graphic to differentiate from the original and we like the purple and think it looks great.

Robert: It’s not my mum actually, it’s her almost identical sister, my aunt Guiliana. The idea came mainly from a graphic I had first tried to use at college. I did a degree in design, and I was thinking of using it for my fanzine but never got round to it and then I realised it was the perfect graphic for an LP. Then as Ken said, we assembled images to place in each segment, some tongue in cheek. Pete Barrett added some more somewhat risqué images that we replaced for the subsequent re-releases. Pete did a great job on it and I think he really helped us capture a lot of our personalities on it. It’s undoubtedly iconic now.

Do you have a favourite indie record shop you’re looking forward to seeing it on the shelves of? 

Ken: We love Monorail in Glasgow, run by Stephen Pastel and his super team, so that would be nice, and The Big Blue shop which is the home of our current record label Last Night from Glasgow. 

And the best bit? Bobby and Ken took us through Sisters, track by track:

Everybody's Somebody's Fool  

Bobby: The version of Everybody's Somebody's Fool on the album is the version we recorded with Robin Miller at Air Studios. It was one of the first recording sessions we did for the album.  We had strings on it and we always felt it was a really kind of fresh version, probably not as good as the version we'd done earlier for Postcard Records, but better recorded for sure and better sound quality.

Young at Heart

Bobby: Young at Heart was a song that I'd written with Siobhan Fahey for Bananarama to do, and we were doing it at the same time live with The Bluebells. It's kind of a Northern Soul thing: we were going to a Northern Soul club in London, Siobhan’s cousin was a DJ there. The Bluebells’ version we played live for a long time and when Bananarama’s LP came out, we were a bit disappointed. I think they were a bit disappointed themselves, actually, with the kind of Jolley & Swain pop production on it and we decided we were going to try and do it a different way for our album.  We were up in Inverness and we were pretty much in that kind of Dylan mode, you know, that “I Want You” feel and we were very interested in having a violin on it.  So we just wanted to do it as completely differently as possible. We all thought it had a good chance of it being a hit single, so that's what we did. 

I’m Falling

Bobby:  I’m Falling is really kind of like three songs put together, two of mine and one of Ken's that kind of all fitted together. The verse was a thing that I'd been working on when I was trying to do this thing where I didn't repeat a single chord all the way through and I managed to achieve that.

Will She Always be Waiting

Bobby: Will she always be waiting used to be a song called Wishful Thinking that we did in The Bluebells pretty much from the start of our existence really. It developed over the years as songs do live and it developed quite naturally. And then we started working with Elvis Costello and he produced what I think is the definitive version of this song. He played organ on it.  We did several other versions of it, some with strings, but all these versions were based on Elvis's original track that we recorded with him in Jam Studios up at Finsbury Park.

Some Sweet Day

Bobby: Some Sweet Day was another very early Bluebells song.  We used to play this song quite fast. In fact, on the Kid Jensen radio sessions (available on the 3CD/DVD version), you're able to hear the original fast version. When we got to Elvis again, Elvis being the master producer that he was slowed it down and brought out the beauty of the song.  In fact, he sings on it, he plays guitar on it as well. His harmonies on it are fantastic and the trumpet arrangement thing that he did in the middle section of the song, I really adore, it's one of my favourite recordings by The Bluebells. 

Cath

Bobby: Cath was kind of a happy accident. Again, this was an early song that used to be called ‘honest to goodness’, when we first started to do The Bluebells. We came to record it because we were still in Jam studios, but Elvis had got ill, so we had a day booked in the studio and rather than waste that we kind of like did this version up and with the new lyrics that we'd worked out live. And we were very inspired by ‘Maggie May’.  And we had a great, great, great fun doing it, so much energy in the track and we really enjoyed the mandolin break at the end. In fact, at one point when it was a single that John Peel said he wanted to play Mandolin on TOTP with us to emulate his appearance with The Faces when they performed ‘Maggie May’ in the 70’s. Unfortunately, we didn't get a high enough position in the chance for that to happen, but it would have been great. 

H.O.L.L.A.N.D. 

Ken: The title H.O.L.L.A.N.D came from the back of a Valentine’s day card I once received (Honestly) for my first girlfriend and I thought it was so lovely I wrote the song.

Red Guitars

Bobby: Red Guitars is a song that was kind of like a proto political song for us. Obviously, you know, we were very socialist in our leanings . I wrote this song mostly because I wanted Russell to sing it, who was an original Bluebell. We really liked the idea of having three vocalists, me, Ken and Russell. We always thought that was a kind of Buffalo Springfield, Byrdsy kind of thing. And I really loved it when Russell sang it on the Old Grey Whistle Test, but I think Ken really nails it on the recorded version. 

Syracuse University 

Bobby: Syracuse University came about when we were touring America and I was quite fascinated with Lou Reed being a student, at Syracuse University, and I always had in my head this imagining of the place being a kind of hot bed for culture and literature, but then I found out through American friends when we were over there that most of the students who were at Syracuse University ended up in the arms business, so it kind of destroyed the illusion a bit, but I love this song because of Craig Gannon, who later joined The Smiths , but I'd been in Aztec Camera before he joined us. I loved his guitar playing on this, and I really loved the fact it was a great song for me personally and a great song for the band to record.  I really, really, really enjoyed it.

Learn to Love

Ken: The idea behind the song was a great disbelief in an unemployed youth signing up to fight for one's country in some foreign field against some "other" for the "King's shilling" when we would be better learning a bit of peace, love and understanding.

The Patriot Game

Ken: My brother David and I  first heard this song sung at a party in our home in the early 70's by the song's writer Dominic Behan. Dominic was a friend of our Mum and Dad's and we were  brought up in fairly folky surroundings, a kind of council house bohemia. When we started performing as The Bluebells we asked Dominic to update some of the verses so that it could become more of a universal message for young folk and the futility of war.

South Atlantic Way

Ken: Specifically about the Falklands conflict. David and I wrote this with Dominic Behan in 1982 at a session in our house. We had just watched the news featuring all the pomp and ceremony of the British naval fleet leaving port heading south for battle cheered on by thousands of Union Jack wavers egged on by Thatcher who used the war to change her very unpopular leadership. with a huge  3 million unemployed into the jingoistic ‘Iron Lady’ and the flag shaggers fell for it. 

Aim in Life

Ken: The first lyrics I ever wrote when I was 15. It was originally a really up tempo punk song that David and I performed in our schoolboy Punk band the great, Raw Deal with mates Dixie and Donald Kerr. It lay dormant for a few years and I came across the words in an old diary and played around with some chords and turned it into a ballad which Elvis Costello really liked and encouraged us to record. It's about a lonely reclusive lady that I delivered newspapers to. She lived in a huge house but only used one room where she slept in a sleeping bag and watched a lot of T.V. and she would talk to me sometimes. May her God bless her.